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Gun Present: Inside a Southern District Attorney's Battle against Gun Violence
Gun Present takes us inside the everyday operations of the law in practice at a courthouse in the Deep South. Illuminating the challenges accompanying the prosecution of criminal cases involving guns, the three coauthors–an anthropologist, a geographer, and a district attorney–present a deeply human portrait of prosecutors’ everyday work. Based on a long-term, immersive, community-based participatory research partnership between researchers and criminal justice professionals, Gun Present chronicles how a justice assemblage—comprised of institutional structures and practices, relationships and roles, and individual moral and emotional worlds—informs the everyday administration of justice. Weaving together in-depth interviews, quantitative analysis of more than a thousand criminal cases involving guns, analysis of trial transcripts, and over a year of ethnographic observations, Gun Present provides a model for academic-practitioner collaborations.
251 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2024
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February 13, 2025
“Gun Present” is an exercise in self-aggrandizement masquerading as a serious academic inquiry into the criminal justice system’s handling of gun violence. What should have been an insightful, empirically grounded exploration instead reads like a vanity project—one in which its authors, seem more interested in basking in their own perceived heroism than in addressing the real, systemic issues that plague our society.
The book ostensibly promises a window into the day-to-day challenges of prosecuting gun-related crimes in the Deep South. Instead, it devolves into a poorly written, superficial account that dresses up tedious ethnographic observations and reams of case data as insight. The narrative is riddled with jargon and inflated claims, leaving one to wonder whether the real purpose was to pad résumés rather than to contribute meaningfully to the debate on gun violence.
Perhaps the most glaring—and infuriating—aspect of “Gun Present” is the sheer hypocrisy at its core. Here we have Hays Webb, a proud Republican and a patron member of the National Rifle Association, parading as a crusader against gun violence. It is a transparent contradiction: how can one claim to combat a scourge that is the direct byproduct of the policies and cultural values his own party has championed for decades? This book is essentially a thinly veiled plea for credit—a desperate bid to treat the symptom of a problem that his political affiliations have helped create and continue to perpetuate.
In its attempt to serve as a model for academic-practitioner collaboration, “Gun Present” ends up being an embarrassing and unconvincing treatise. Rather than advancing our understanding of gun violence or offering any innovative solutions, it merely amplifies the self-important narrative of those who are as much a part of the problem as they claim to be trying to solve it. Ultimately, the work feels less like a serious scholarly effort and more like a hollow, politically tinted ego trip.
The book ostensibly promises a window into the day-to-day challenges of prosecuting gun-related crimes in the Deep South. Instead, it devolves into a poorly written, superficial account that dresses up tedious ethnographic observations and reams of case data as insight. The narrative is riddled with jargon and inflated claims, leaving one to wonder whether the real purpose was to pad résumés rather than to contribute meaningfully to the debate on gun violence.
Perhaps the most glaring—and infuriating—aspect of “Gun Present” is the sheer hypocrisy at its core. Here we have Hays Webb, a proud Republican and a patron member of the National Rifle Association, parading as a crusader against gun violence. It is a transparent contradiction: how can one claim to combat a scourge that is the direct byproduct of the policies and cultural values his own party has championed for decades? This book is essentially a thinly veiled plea for credit—a desperate bid to treat the symptom of a problem that his political affiliations have helped create and continue to perpetuate.
In its attempt to serve as a model for academic-practitioner collaboration, “Gun Present” ends up being an embarrassing and unconvincing treatise. Rather than advancing our understanding of gun violence or offering any innovative solutions, it merely amplifies the self-important narrative of those who are as much a part of the problem as they claim to be trying to solve it. Ultimately, the work feels less like a serious scholarly effort and more like a hollow, politically tinted ego trip.
Displaying 1 of 1 review